`Yoske, Yoske,' Doesn't Matter, Nathan Plays It

Nah. Nathan Shor's not big on the Beatles, although he likes them now more than he did when they first came around.

Fortunately, he's plenty big on a lot of other stuff. It's all in his green pocket notebook, alphabetically listed for easy reference. He has "This Train" and "Rock of Ages" under "Spirituals," "Yoske, Yoske" under "Yiddish Hebrew" and 72 other songs that start with the letter "I."

Sometimes between rooms at Mount Sinai Hospital, Nathan has to stop and think a moment. When he's lucky, a song will come to him -- especially if the patient's name is Bill -- "Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey," or Rose -- "Rambling Rose."

In those rooms, he can chat just a little, then whip out his harmonica and entertain.

"My wife says I take out my harmonica more than I take out her," he says.

Nathan's been volunteering for five years . His wife, Mildred, who once worked in Mount Sinai's payroll department, has volunteered at the Sinai Shoppe, the hospital's gift store, for eight.

Nathan's a personable man with a self-effacing sense of humor. He gets on well with the patients -- once they understand that he's with the help.

As a kid, he played the harmonica, his brother played Hawaiian guitar, and his father picked out tunes on the piano. But Nathan turned 40 before he took up the instrument in earnest. He got serious after retiring from Hamilton-Standard. Now, at 74, he owns eight harmonicas, including a little inch-long harmonica that he uses when he plays "It's a Small World" to the babies in the nursery.

"It's the first music they ever hear," he says proudly.

Last month, a Windsor woman wrote to thank Nathan, who'd come in to play his harmonica a few moments after the woman's mother was taken off a respirator. Her mother died the day after Nathan's visit.

"I'm sure her spirit was dancing with your music," the woman

wrote. "For us, the music provided a perfect balance to our sadness, with the result that we could feel it and not be overwhelmed by it."

Nathan doesn't restrict his playing to the hospital. He just returned from a six-week visit with his son in Israel. He played his harmonica on the plane.

"My wife doesn't like for me to do that," he says. "It embarrasses her."

He starts his rounds on the hospital's ninth floor and moves counterclockwise so he doesn't get lost.

"How are you doing?" he says, as he enters a room. "How about if I play you a little music? See if you can guess this one."

He launches into "Something," but the patient, William Camby, who says he has trouble seeing and has cotton in his ears, doesn't recognize it.

"I am not a man of music," he says. "I am a man of reading."

In the next room, Nneka Reliford, age 5, is visiting someone with her mother, Gwen. Nathan starts with the theme to "Sesame Street." Nneka, with one hand on her mother's arm and another in her mouth, smiles shyly. Yes, she knows the song.

"At least my playing is improving," says Nathan.

Down the hall, Lino Valentin Jr. is helping a patient into a wheelchair. Nathan plays "Puff the Magic Dragon." Lino asks for "Get Down Bubba Baby, Get Down."

In the next room, Nathan asks, "Would I be adding to anybody's pain if I played a little music?" He would not, and the man laying in the bed swings his left arm back and forth, hardly in time to the music, but the effort's there.

"Slow-motion time," Nathan says.

Not everyone wants to hear him. Some patients are asleep, some are in pain. But most are a little delighted and a lot nonplussed to get a free one- or two-song concert. Over the afternoon, Nathan will work his way through the hospital's maze, and then go home to practice some more. He's even got a harmonica in his car, in case he gets stuck in traffic on the way back to Bloomfield.

Now, he's asking for Rollerblades, so he can move around quicker. He's only partially teasing